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UPDATED: Big beer bottle bill just passes in the Alabama Senate

Madison Underwood is a staff writer for Weld and writes news, politics and more. He has lived in Birmingham since coming here for college in 2002. Madison is originally from Livingston, Ala., and the Black Belt region still holds a special place in his heart.

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Alabama may see 25.4 ounce beer bottles sooner than expected. A bill that would allow the bigger bottles made it on to the Alabama's Senate…

UPDATE: Per the Free The Hops Twitter account (@FreeTheHops), the Gourmet Bottle Bill passed the Alabama Senate Tuesday night with a 14-13 vote.“BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. We passed the Senate 14-13,” the account said.

Alabama may see 25.4 ounce beer bottles sooner than expected.

A bill that would allow the bigger bottles made it on to the Alabama’s Senate special order calendar for today. If the bill, SB294, is considered today when the session begins at 5 p.m., it will need to survive a procedural hurdle called a Budget Isolation Resolution (BIR) that requires approval by a two-thirds super majority. If it passes the BIR, the bill can be brought up for final passage — a simple majority vote — and then await consideration in the House.

“Alabama is the only state that restricts beer bottle size to 16 ounces or less,” Free the Hops president Gabe Harris told Weld in an e-mail. Right now, those 16 ounce tallboys are the biggest beers, in terms of container size, that we can get in this state. That means that there are still many beers that Alabama brew aficionados have to bootleg from neighbor states.

For extensive information about the House and Senate bills and to read the bill, click here.

Free the Hops notified the public of the bill’s listing on the special order calendar today, and urged supporters to contact their legislators.